The editors of LIFE magazine present this history of America in pictures, often contrasting the past and present. The first section travels the country exploring what was here before the coming of man, from the heights of Denali to the depths of the Grand Canyon. The book surveys the country when it was the domain of Native Americans, followed by the Colonial era and the Revolutionary War. Photographs begin to document the American experience from before the Civil War, chronicling the rise of the great cities and social issuesówomen's rights, urban unrest, civil rights, child labor, the Great Depressionócaptured in images by Jacob Riis, Lewis Hine, Dorothea Lange, Margaret Bourke-White, Alfred Eisenstaedt, and Gordon Parks.